Manic production mars Cincy Shakespeare's season opening production

Imagine the result if Noel Coward had written King Lear. Imagine the savagery that families reserve for their most bitter internecine battles but verbalized in the lilting, wit-lit language of drawing-room comedy. That’s the effect of The Lion in Winter, the James Goldman script that stumbled on Broadway in 1966 but has since become a staple with regional, university and community theaters.

Now it’s opening Season 16 at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC) with seven most familiar and ordinarily persuasive performers directed by artistic guru Brian Isaac Phillips.

It’s 1183. Henry II — King of England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and most of France — gathers together a Christmas party that is certain to produce fireworks: his scheming wife (Eleanor of Aquitaine), his rebellious sons (Richard the Lionheart; angry, overlooked Geoffrey; and bumptious John), his current mistress (French princess Alais) and the French King (Philip Capet).

In Act 2, Sherman Fracher (as Eleanor) lets her hair down — figuratively and actually. And Bruce Cromer (as Henry) really gets his dander up. That’s when the production finally stops chattering and scattering and turns into a tight, merciless slugfest. Act 1 is a mesh of cross-purpose stratagems that protagonists take up, try on and discard. The production never quite weaves these threads into unified forward motion.